


Hold Me

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Series: What Ifs And Role Reversals [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asian Stephen Strange, Asian-American Character, BAMF Rhodey, Hurt Tony Stark, I just like asian Stephen ok leave me be, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, Protective Rhodey, Racebending, Rhodey Feels, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Stephen is a sad chicken, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, but then he is a happy chicken when Tony is back, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:56:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11546037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony Stark meets Stephen Strange before his trip to Afghanistan, establishing a relationship with the man that the people around them found equal parts baffling and amusing. Meeting the doctor changes the entire course of his life though, not that he knows it at the time.





	Hold Me

Stephen Strange met Tony stark in a casino taking the house for all they were worth and nothing intrigued him more than someone with a cocky attitude and nice facial hair. He can practically hear Christine tell him that he’s so arrogant he was looking to date himself but mostly he thought Tony looked moderately attractive in that red shirt surrounded by women and he’s never been picky when it came to sex partners. Actually he was, but barely. A doctor’s eye at least helped him avoid unfavorable situations every once and awhile. Something tells him to avoid Tony Stark but as usual he ignores the instinct that tells him something will go wrong and approaches.

To his surprise Tony is just as happy to entertain him as the women, something he was sure he would have heard about in headlines but he ignores it to tell Tony to change his bets. He’s so far ahead if he loses there was no loss to him so he does. Actually given that he’s a billionaire there would be no loss to him anyways. Except when he rolls the dice they land on Stephen’s lucky number just like they always did and Tony looks at him in surprise, “well buddy, you just might be my lucky charm,” he says. And with that they continue all but robbing the casino until they get all but chased out by the house bouncers looking for their heads.

“Well there’s another casino in Vegas I can’t go to,” Tony says sadly, giving the casino a forlorn look.

Stephen shrugs, “another one for me too though I doubt they’ll notice,” he says. Tony frowns at him and Stephen shrugs, “they say all Asians look the same, I figured I’d use it to my advantage.”

Tony throws his head back and laughs, “oh I am going to be good friends with you. You’re coming home with me, come on, my driver is this way,” he says and they set off together. Tony asks questions, most of them centering around how he knew how to place his bets and he gives Tony a cheesy line about magic. Actually it was statistics but he knew Tony would work that out when he was a little more sober and his math was a little less off. Stephen tended to avoid alcohol, probably a habit of being on call for so long. Even in his residency he was always being called in on short notice and so he just avoided drinking. Tony asked about that too, and then he had a thousand questions about being a surgeon.

He happily answers them all, grinning at Tony in a suggestive enough way mostly out of curiosity. Personally Stephen was literally too intelligent to care about what was between a person’s legs when it was what was between their ears that interested him. He had no patience for stupidity, especially of the willful variety. Tony watches him with surprisingly sharp eyes for someone who was obviously drunk. He wonders what he’s looking for but in the end it doesn’t matter because most of their clothes end up lost somewhere in the hotel room. He searches for a full hour the next morning before giving up on his left sock.

*

Tony doesn’t really expect to run into Strange again but they had the same taste in cars, apparently. He looks over the new sports model, all but drooling on it when someone walks up beside him. “Don’t think you’re getting this car Stark, I’ve had my eye on it for months,” he says.

He looks over to find one Stephen Strange smiling down at him and Tony squints, “oh no, you’re not getting this car. I helped build the engine in that thing, she is _mine_ ,” he says a little possessively.

Strange snorts, “well I already paid so you can stare at my car for a few more minutes but then I’m driving it out of here,” he says.

Tony gives the sleek black car a look of longing and decides Strange is bluffing, he _has_ to be bluffing. Sadly when Tony tries to buy the car it turned out Strange _had_ bought it and now he was going to have to find a new model to sink his money into. He wanted _that one_ though. Strange wanders up and leans on the counter beside him, “I could take you for a spin,” he says in a tone that indicates this is a fact rather than a suggestion. Tony never really thought he’d like his own arrogance on someone else but he kind of liked the way Strange sounded so sure of himself. But that didn’t mean he was about to just go along with his ideas.

“Oh no, I helped make the engine in your car, _I_ get to drive it,” he says.

He can see Strange consider it before he smiles, “of you can tell me the difference between magic with a ‘c’ and magick with a ‘k’ I’ll let you drive,” he says. He looks smug, like Tony wouldn’t know the answer to that and he isn’t exactly wrong. Tony thinks about this for several moments before something clicks in his head.

“The ‘k’ is to differentiate between stage magic- magic with a ‘c’- and magic that uses um… well some kind of external force that’s honestly probably just chemistry or something given that magic of any kind isn’t real. Doesn’t it have something to do with Aleister Crowley?” he asks, frowning.

Strange looks impressed, “well then Stark, you get to drive but I get to pick where we eat dinner,” he says. He also says this like it’s a done deal but like before there’s something attractive about it so Tony decides to roll with it for the time being.

Their dynamic quickly falls out like that- one or both of them attempting to tell the other what’s going on and then haggling. They were good at it too, enough that both of the respective women (though they weren’t dating said women) in their lives found it amusing and astounding that they even got along. Still, Tony enjoyed the phone calls he got in the middle of business meetings- Stephen knew how much he hated them and interrupted them on purpose no matter how much Pepper threatened him- to plan dinner only to argue about the time or place. Usually one of them won out on time and the other on place. Or they ended up planning something else altogether. Either way he quickly caught the feelings and despite his best attempts Strange was not the kind of guy you could shake out of fear. He ended up negotiating Tony out of his fear of commitment and right back into a relationship and Tony had to admire talent like that.

*

When Stephen hears about Tony he’s in surgery yelling at Christine, who is too graceful about it as usual. “Christine!” he yells when he needs some blood sucked away from the incision site and she complies, knowing what needed to be done when no one else would. Everyone else was incompetent, that’s why, but Christine was shockingly talented. Too talented to be his assistant of sorts that was for certain. He thinks she sticks around either out of love or Stockholm Syndrome, he isn’t sure which.

A new nurse walks in to assist, replacing the one that left a few minutes ago and he shakes his head. “Shame about Stark,” he says so someone else who switched out roughly fifteen minutes ago.

“What about Stark?” Stephen asks almost on autopilot. Tony asked him once how he could possibly talk while he worked but he’s full on danced to music in surgery, it was just a matter of knowing what he was doing and he _always_ knew what he was doing. The nurse falls silent and Stephen keeps working until he seems to realize that something is off about the silence and he pulls back. “What about Stark?” he asks again, more forcefully this time.

“He… got kidnapped by terrorists. In Afghanistan,” the nurse says as if Stephen wouldn’t have been able to put that together himself. That’s the last thing he remembers before waking up in a hospital bed.

He goes to get up immediately but Christine is there pushing him back down, “lay down, Strange. You hit your head pretty bad and I have the latest news on Tony,” she says and he relaxes for a moment. “There… there was a video released from the terrorists for a ransom. I… Stephen so far no one is doing much of anything save for his best friend- Colonel James Rhodes. He’s fighting pretty hard to do some kind of rescue mission.” He lies there in his bed taking that in for a long few moments.

“Show me the video,” he says finally, barely able to get it out through his dry throat.

“Stephen,” Christine starts but he waves her off.

“Show. Me. The. Video,” he tells her, giving her a look that meant he was serious about this. If he saw… if he saw Tony he could try and gauge his condition, see if he was okay. Christine looks like she wants to argue but after a few moments she squeezes his hand and takes off to find him that video.

When she returns he wasn’t prepared, not that he would be even if Tony weren’t hurt. “Jesus what it _that_?” he asks as he looks at Tony’s chest. There was gauze all around it and something was… sticking out? He brightens the screen and gasps at the wound there. Tony shouldn’t be _alive_ with that and… he immediately looks over the rest of his condition and he’s astonished to find how healthy Tony is all things considered. He had medical attention and Stephen wanted to meet this doctor immediately both to thank them and to offer them a job. Whatever the doctor did Tony looked remarkably healthy despite the gaping wound in his chest. He hands Christine the StarkPad back and does his best not to throw up. She gently touches his arm, squeezing lightly.

*

Rhodey didn’t like talking back to his superiors, especially not in the Army, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He knew that three months was a long time but he could feel something coming. He’s always had what he called a ‘Tony Sense’; he just knew when something was going on with him. He knew when they split up that something was going to happen but they were in an armed convoy, how bad could things have gone? Apparently hog fucking wild because his best friend was kidnapped and the only one taking it worse than him was one Stephen Strange. The man had a lot in common with Tony so he had been shocked when he had gone on a brief leave to try and be of use to Rhodey in finding Tony. Strange loved his job and he expected him to throw himself into it but instead he came here. Rhodey could admire that even if he still wasn’t sure he approved of Stephen Strange.

But Strange is a doctor, not a tracker. The man was useless to him but Rhodey found tasks for him to do anyways and told him it was helpful even when it wasn’t. It helped them both Rhodey reasoned because he got to take care of someone and Strange got to feel useful. Strange wasn’t the kind of guy that liked to give up control and Rhodey was the kind of guy that liked to help, this way they both got a little of what they needed until they weren’t useless altogether. Which was going to be soon if Rhodey couldn’t convince his boss to do another sweep of a small area they only flew over a half a time two and a half months ago.

“It’s been three months Rhodes. I don’t mean to be offensive but you’re being emotional here, you know this isn’t the right call you just want your friend back. It’s admirable Rhodes, but you know I can’t let you use any more resources on this. Stark is probably dead,” he says not unkindly.

He steels himself and presses forward with his argument, “with all do respect, sir, this _is_ the right call. And yes, I am fully aware of my emotional state at this moment but it isn’t just fueled by my wanting Tony back, it’s fueled by the fear of what Tony is capable of. You have no idea the kinds of things he can build, what we’ve seen is only the tip of the iceberg with him. If those terrorists give him the resources I would in their position we will not be prepared to combat that, sir. We need him back before something happens and things have been quiet too long.”

For a long moment the lieutenant looks at him and then he eventually sighs, “you can feel something coming, can’t you?” he asks.

Rhodey lets himself relax a little, “yes sir, I can. When Tony Stark is involved you don’t really want bad feelings, at least not in a situation like this.”

The other man sighs, “do you think you can find him?” he asks

“I have no idea,” Rhodey says honestly.

There’s a few beats of silence before he finally gets a nod, “I can feel something coming too Rhodes, and I’d rather take my chances with getting my ass chewed giving you more resources than bearing witness to whatever Tony Stark might unleash on us,” he says and he waves Tony off. Rhodey gives him a brief thanks and takes off, telling everyone he already gathered that they were heading out in thirty minutes before he goes to find Strange.

“You need to get into some gear,” he tells him, “we’re going to need a medic.”

Strange jumps up, abandoning whatever task he was working on. “Your found him?” he asks, eyes bright with relief and excitement. Rhodey winces as he realizes the implications of his words.

“No, but I’m hoping we can. Put this on,” he tells him, handing him a uniform and a helmet. The last thing they needed was to have the brilliant surgeon getting killed before he could take a good look at Tony. Strange takes the uniform and Rhodey tells him where to find him so they could leave.

By the time they’re up in the air and two miles out they’ve heard news of an explosion that Rhodey _knows_ is Tony. A glance over to Strange tells him he senses it too so they press on towards the explosion, which was in the area they were headed to anyways. They’re almost in the right airspace when they see something go flying out of the smoke in the background. “Go wherever that thing is headed,” Rhodey says quickly. He gets a look from the pilot he recruited and he makes a gesture towards what it almost certainly Tony flying out of the smoke, “you heard me, get moving!” he tells the pilot. They shift directions and Rhodey tells them to watch the ground for movement as they fly lower to the ground.

It’s Strange who notices him first, yelling just as Rhodey spots him. “Land over there!” he yells as Tony stops walking and looks up. He has what looks like a shirt wrapped around his head presumably to protect him from the heat not that it did much for the rest of his torso, which had a flimsy muscle shirt on it. Rhodey jumps out of the chopper as soon as it was safe for him to do so, Strange not far behind him and Tony falls to him knees in the sand, smiling and laughing Rhodey thinks. He had one bizarre best friend, he swore. He lands in front of him and pulls him into a hug that probably hurt but he missed his best friend, damnit. “Next time you ride with me, okay?” he tells Tony.

“I’m sorry,” Strange yells at him over the noise of the chopper, “but he needs medical attention.”

“No shit,” Rhodey snaps; hugging Tony closer and ignoring the little wiggle of protest he gives. He doesn’t have much fight in him given his usual.

“Rhodey, he needs medical attention _now_. What do you have in the chopper?” Strange asks in a weird tone. His doctor voice, Rhodey realizes, and he lets Tony go so the doctor can look at him. He had mistaken the interruption for a personal one, which was likely still true, but Strange saw things that Rhodey wouldn’t given his training so he lets him look Tony over.

“Can you walk?” Strange asks and Tony nods but when he tries to stand and walk he nearly trips and falls face first in the sand. Strange doesn’t waste any time picking Tony up bridal style to carry him to the chopper and it’s a testament to how exhausted Tony must be that he doesn’t put up a fight. They all but run back and Strange quickly settles Tony on the floor and starts yelling orders, including yelling for someone named Christine at least four times before he seems to realize she isn’t there. Routine and shock, Rhodey figures as he watches him slowly work Tony over as they fly back.

*

When Tony wakes up he can see Stephen’s brown eyes looking back down at him. “Hey princess, you’re not going to be awake much longer but we need to take out that chest plate,” he says. Tony tries to move, to tell him about the shrapnel in his heart but he can’t. He can hear the heart rate machine start beeping like crazy though and Stephen’s eyes go wide. “Shh, Tony calm down we know about the shrapnel okay? We’re going to take it out.” Tony tries to react, to do anything but the best he gets is a small shake of his head.

“Hey, shhh, we’ve got you. I had Rhodes examine that chest piece and I’m not sure if you’re aware but palladium will poison you, we have no choice but to operate before the poisoning spreads too far. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t gotten far already and trust me, palladium poisoning is not the way you want to go. It’s slow and painful so we’re going to get you ready to operate and we’re going to take that and the shrapnel out, okay? I’ve never done this before but I’m the best of the best, you couldn’t do any better so you’ll be fine,” he says confidently and now they were back in familiar territory. Maybe Tony couldn’t respond right but he knew he was being negotiated into surgery. And he had no idea that the construction of the reactor would result in palladium poisoning. He thought that it was encased well enough to avoid that.

He hears his heart rate slow according to the beeps on the machine recording his heart rate and Stephen relaxes. “That’s it baby, don’t worry I’ve got you. Rhodes is waiting for you on the other end of this and trust me he has been through hell and back trying to find you. You’ve got one hell of a best friend there.” Yeah, Tony knew Rhodey was the best kind of guy; it was how they ended up friends for so long.

The last thing he remembers before he passes out is thinking about how Yinsen had looked so similar to Stephen, standing over him like some kind of guardian angel he didn’t deserve. _Don’t waste your life_. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t ever let Yinsen down like that, not after his sacrifice.

*

Stephen waits impatiently for Tony to wake back up. His surgery had taken almost two full days given how touch and go he was the whole time. He would have waited but with a poisonous chest plate- or arc reactor as Rhodey called it- that reduced his lung capacity to roughly seventy percent, less with his recent trauma, and the surprisingly minimal infection around the wound he couldn’t really afford to wait. So they set up a space for surgery on the base Rhodey flew them to, one that was further out from the one they flew out of. They would be responding to the explosion, Rhodey explained, and with a doctor on board he felt confident enough to fly Tony out further than he might have otherwise.

It was the closest he thought he’d get to approval from the man until he walked out of the operating room ashen and pale from being awake and anxious so long to tell Rhodey that Tony would make a full recovery. Rhodey had jumped up from his chair and hugged him, thanking him profusely through his tears. He held on to Rhodey too, happy to have someone to share his emotional distress with at the moment given that Christine wasn’t there. He never wanted to do surgery without her ever again. She was just too valuable to him.

Now they were playing the waiting game for Tony to come back around and wake up. Stephen had slept for just over a day thanks to his emotional and physical exhaustion, which was better than the few hours Rhodey got, but every moment that passed was still agonizing. Finally though Tony wakes up, hand flying to his chest and Stephen quickly shoos him away. “Don’t you mess with that, that reconstruction took eighteen hours and it’s my best work. I’m not having it ruined by you fussing with it,” he tells Tony in a voice that reminded him of his mother oddly enough.

Tony huffs out a laugh and looks like he immediately regretted it, “ouch,” he says softly.

“Yes, you’re going to want to avoid laughter for a little while. You scared the hell out of us,” he says, voice cracking unexpectedly towards the end of that.

“Scared the hell out of myself. How’d you do it? Yinsen said it was impossible.” Tony asks. They both know what he’s talking about but Yinsen is new.

“Who’s Yinsen? The doctor that you had, because I’d like to meet him. I thought I was good but the man must have the touch of angels given how well he did with you,” he says, tears filling his eyes. Jesus, he couldn’t even imagine the conditions. They found the cave Tony was being held in and that he had been building some bomb that Rhodey thought was scary. He trusted Rhodes’ opinion on that and focused on how the hell this Yinsen man could have saved Tony’s life and done such a remarkable job in those conditions. He barely managed in a sterile environment let alone only having a cave and god even knew what supplies to work with.

Tony looks suddenly like he’s been punched in the chest, a feat for a man who’s heart could have very well fallen out along with a few other important things. “Yinsen… he’s dead. He saved me,” he says softly.

“Yes, I can see that,” Stephen says, gesturing to Tony’s shockingly healthy body.

“No, after that. Yeah he saved me from the shrapnel but the suit was taking too long to charge and I needed more time. He… he shouldn’t have but he went out with a gun to try and buy me time and… and he did but he died.” Tony’s heart rate was increasing to high levels, especially considering the heart conditions he now had and Stephen thinks fast.

“Pepper called. She’s happy that you’re okay, ecstatic actually. She’s been worried for these last few months and apparently she’s now good friends with Christine because I’ve been here for a month trying to find you and… well she’ll be happy to see you when you get home,” he says. He was beginning to babble and he is not a man for babbling. Tony brought out all sorts of strange things in him apparently.

This at least slows Tony’s heart rate back into normal levels, thankfully. “She misses me? Thought she’d be happy to be rid of me,” he says.

Stephen laughs, “no Tony, we’d all be devastated if something more than what happened had happened to you. We were terrified as it was. Now go back to sleep, you need your rest okay?” he asks softly, brushing Tony’s hair out of his face. He wasn’t making sense, talking about suits needing to charge and whatnot. Clearly he was still feeling the shock.

*

Tony stands in front of a crowd of reporters that he called as soon as he landed on American soil. They all look eager while Obadiah looks worried behind him and Rhodey, Stephen, and Pepper look worried in the front row of reporters. He recognizes Christine Everhart there too.

Oddly the scene reminds him of Yinsen, back in the caves when he asked Tony if he had anything to go back to, a family. He had said no, there was nothing but his money. A man with everything and nothing, Yinsen had said. Tony was wrong though, he had a family he just didn’t have the kind he and Yinsen had been talking about.

He had a best friend who searched for him for three months and even talked back to his superiors to keep on searching. He had an assistant who has long since been dedicated to him beyond the scope of her job who had been so happy to see him back that she cried. And Stephen, Stephen dropped his life’s passion to come look for him and made medical history with the surgery he preformed on Tony to save his life. After talking to him he has agreed to help Tony reach out to doctors to teach them how to save patients with his condition, to try and save as many lives as he could after the destruction he’s wrought. It was the right thing to do, and so was this.

Taking a step towards the podium he looks at the cue cards in his hands and throws them in the little wastebasket beside the podium, ignoring Pepper’s wince. He tells the media what he saw, what he experienced, and he tells them that he became comfortable with a system that didn’t hold him accountable for his own actions. He tells than that this was unacceptable; that he simply couldn’t continue the way he had before recklessly destroying everything in his path for the pursuit of _money_. It was unacceptable and that was why, as if immediately, he was shutting down the weapons sector of Stark Industries.

And, not for the first time, Tony watches the crowd go wild though for a different reason than the usual.

*

“How did it go?” Tony asks, eyes lighting up as Stephen gets out of surgery.

“Perfectly. I think I might be getting better at this,” he says with a cocky grin.

“You are certainly better than the rest of us, sir,” one of the doctors that was in the room with him tells him. Tony can see the awe on his face and Tony doesn’t blame him.

“Don’t let me take all the credit, you were all pretty good in there. You’re all learning fast,” Stephen tells him. High praise coming from him and the doctor knows it. He takes the compliment and leaves, probably exhausted after being in surgery that long.

“Thank you for helping me with this,” Tony says softly. After all he went through even _after_ he came back was a lot to handle. It turned out Obadiah had wanted him dead, nearly killed him trying to battle it out with a suit that was remarkably like Tony’s though it was inferior. Not surprising considering he’s always been the golden goose of the company. Stock points might have dropped faster than flies in a powerful fumigation after his announcement that he was leaving weapons behind but he was in a full recovery now.

And now he did his best to destroy the Ten Rings with Rhodey saving his ass from the military trying to blow his ass up thankfully. In the military’s defense they had no idea what to do with some rando in a suit flying around. Stephen was also helping on the ground, as was Tony though in different ways. Stephen was in charge of medical care and he had adapted to the conditions surprisingly well and he made a pretty good teacher. Christine had even been gracious enough to come along but mostly because Stephen literally begged her to. Tony didn’t think she could resist that.

Stephen comes up to Tony and presses a kiss to his lips, “you have been through hell and back and I discovered I have a knack for heart surgery. Of _course_ I was going to help you. Besides, these hospitals are nothing like the ones I’m used to and you know how much I love a challenge,” he says. Tony smiles because yeah, he did.

“You’re probably the second best thing to ever happen to me. Maybe third,” he says, earning an offended look.

“Sorry, Yinsen had to come first and Rhodey was second. But you get a solid third place for saving me after Yinsen saved me the first time and Rhodey found me for you to fix me the second time. You had some tough competition,” he says and Stephen snorts.

“Fine, I _guess_ I will accept third place. You get a shining second, right after Christine beauce I simply cannot function in an operating room without her there. I would have died here if she hadn’t agreed to come,” he says and Tony honestly believes that with the way he called out to her whenever something went wrong. Their dynamic was remarkably similar to his and Pepper’s so he got it. He’d probably be dead without Pepper too honestly- she got a decent forth place in his Most Important Rank. He felt like that was still respectable given how many people saved his ass before she came along to help him save his company’s ass. Without her organization bouncing back would have taken longer but as always Pepper Potts was frighteningly efficient.


End file.
